If you want to earn the attention of your marketplace, you need to give them something important to focus on. Here’s the thing. They will only focus on what’s important to them, not what’s important to you.

A lot of marketing tends to do the complete opposite and focus on the provider, rather than the prospective client. We see lots of broadcasting about how great they are, how great their service is yet very little emphasis placed on solving the specific challenges facing their prospective clients.

That’s the wrong balance.

Earned attention

Broadcasting your special offers will never earn you the attention of your marketplace. The key word there is earn. You earn people’s attention by delivering them-focused information – Information that is all about helping them. My focus here, for example, is to deliver as much useful marketing and business development information to as many small business owners as possible. I don’t write post after post about me and what I want from MY business. I know that people come here for answers and ideas, so that’s what I work hard to provide.

By focusing on the needs of my readers, you connect with me and allow me to be a part of their business development. A subset of you will hire me, without me emailing you with “special offers”. There’s real magic there.

How can you earn the attention of your marketplace?

Give! Give them as much genuinely useful information and help as you can. Then give them even more. Help them solve problems, so they learn to regard (position) you as the go-to person in your industry. This takes time rather than money; creativity rather than force. Connect with people. Educate, don’t sell.

Get this process right and it changes everything. You start attracting qualified, high quality inquiries from people who already know you are a specialist in your field. It’s one of the most enjoyable, profitable and professional ways to grow a business.

8 Comments

I learnt Internet marketing from the owner of SiteSell and his preamble to everything you do online was pre-sell, not sell. It’s so ingrained in me that if I try to sell, it feels uncomfortable and so I have always just focused on content, content, content and despite not blogging as much as some, this is how I attract clients online.

Pre-selling is based on targeting prospective clients with information related to your service (that’s the pre part), so that you can sell to them later (that’s the sell part.)

The 2011 model is based on forming relationships with not only pre-sell targets, but what I call advocates. Advocates can often be people who will never buy from you, BUT they value the information you freely give so highly, that they recommend and refer you to everyone.

For example, you read this post yesterday and then you were kind enough to Retweet it to all your followers. However, you are not in the market for my services. If I were to use the pre-sell model, you would never have done that, because I would not be blogging.

Blogging for business is about reaching out and delivering value to your whole marketplace; including those who have no intention of buying from you. I get thousands of readers here every day, yet I only work a couple of dozen people per year on my program. I provide marketing ideas and advice happily and freely to the other 99.999%, knowing they will never spend a penny with me, but that they may be kind enough to help me reach the tiny minority of readers, who are happy to pay for my services.

Those non-buyers can be of massive value to your business. The pre-sell approach would see them as people to exclude from the “funnel.”

Jim I do agree with your original post but even more so with the supplementary comment (post!) here

21st Century branding and marketing is undergoing seismic changes at digitally induced warp speed, it’s impossible to keep up. By sharing useful information and encouraging dialogue between marketers and their communities, we all help brands be more relevant to their customers and communities.

Blogging and reading & re-blogging is so valuable today for those of us still up for learning anew!

I’ve been trying to say this to a couple of friends – for awhile. They don’t get it. The problem is, these folks are engaging, personable, and quite bright. They have much to offer, but they only take the time to post when they want people to “show up” and support their event or product.

If they’d just take the time to build their community, they would so much more effective. Oh well.